TL;DR — Pick the shortest name you can spell over the phone, register it for more than one year, and keep the registrar account in your company’s name. A .in name needs registrant KYC, which NIXI has required since 2022, and the registry forbids privacy and proxy services, so the record must carry your real details. After expiry a .com has 45 days of grace and 30 of redemption; a .in has a registrar-set grace period and then 30 days of redemption at a fee. Renewal, not registration, is where domains are lost.
Should an Indian business register .in or .com?
Register both when the name matters, and point one at the other. Use .com as the primary when you sell outside India or want the default customers type; use .in when the business is local and the .com is taken. Both are open to anyone: NIXI’s advisory of 29 July 2025 says .in registrations were never restricted to Indian nationals.
The same advisory, as registrars quote it, asks a registrant outside India to state their business connection or purpose in India. A .co.in name follows the same registry rules as .in and costs a little less; it reads as more local and less as a brand.
What has changed for .in registrations in 2026?
Less than the headlines suggest. Registrant KYC is not new: NIXI told its registrars in February 2022 that it had implemented Aadhaar-based e-KYC for new registrants, with PAN, passport, voter card or driving licence as alternatives and a passport or citizenship card for people outside India. The registry site now states that KYC is mandatory under CERT-In’s directions (Section 70B, IT Act 2000).
What did change is enforcement. A registrar notice of 24 July 2025 told resellers that from 1 August 2025 every .in registrant must complete e-KYC through DigiLocker to register or renew a name. DigiLocker is the registrar’s description; NIXI’s own e-KYC guidance describes Aadhaar OTP verification with PAN, passport, voter card or driving licence as alternatives, and its 2022 letter says details may be re-verified at renewal.
The consequence of ignoring the request is the same either way: the registry puts the name on server hold, the site and mail stop, and it stays that way until the verification is done. One registrar’s process page says NIXI does not delete a name for failed verification; it holds it until expiry. A separate NIXI advisory of 11 May 2026 says auctioning or speculative sale of a .in name is not permitted and that such names can be put on hold without notice, so buy a .in name from a registrar, not from a marketplace.
Does WHOIS privacy work on a .in domain?
No privacy or proxy service is permitted. The registrant terms say any kind of proxy service is not allowed and that a registrant whose data is wrong or masked will not be recognised as the owner. The registry’s own lookup withholds some fields, but the registrar holds the full unmasked record, and the terms require it to be accurate.
What the public record shows is narrower than what the registrar holds. On 22 September 2026 the NIXI RDAP service returned two records, for nixi.in and bigrock.in: in both, the organisation, state and country were visible, and the name, street, city, postcode, phone and email were absent, with a note that some data had been removed. Both refer the enquirer to the registrar of record for contact details.
Plan on the organisation name and location being public, and register a business domain in the company’s name with a role mailbox such as admin@ rather than a personal address.
What happens when a .in or .com domain expires?
The name stops resolving and enters grace, then redemption, then deletion. On .com the registry allows 45 days of auto-renew grace, 30 days of redemption and five days of pending delete. On .in the grace period is set by your registrar; after the registrar requests deletion the registry holds the name 30 days in redemption and five on hold.
Redemption costs more than renewal. For .in the registry debits the registrar a redemption fee plus a year’s renewal, and the registrar passes that on. The .IN registrant terms say the registry is under no obligation to warn you before expiry; for .com and other generic domains ICANN’s Expired Registration Recovery Policy requires the registrar to notify you about a month and about a week before expiry, and again within five days after. Set your own reminder for the grace period, not the expiry date, and set it in a calendar somebody owns.
What do domains cost at Vedatricks?
The prices below are our indicative list prices, derived from the wholesale rate card as it stood on 9 April 2026; the table on the domains page shows the current figure, and the exact price is confirmed at checkout. Registration and renewal are the same price: there is no first-year offer that rises at renewal.
.in, .co.in and .com compared, as of 22 September 2026 (Vedatricks prices verified 9 April 2026)
| .in | .co.in | .com | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Register at Vedatricks (per year) | ₹900 | ₹800 | ₹1,350 |
| Renew at Vedatricks (per year) | ₹900 | ₹800 | ₹1,350 |
| Registry | NIXI (.IN Registry) | NIXI (.IN Registry) | Verisign, under ICANN policy |
| Registrant KYC | Mandatory (NIXI) | Mandatory (NIXI) | Not a registry requirement |
| Privacy or proxy service | Not permitted (registrant terms, clause 3) | Not permitted (registrant terms, clause 3) | Permitted under ICANN policy |
| Grace after expiry | Set by the registrar (one registrar publishes 40 days) | Set by the registrar (one registrar publishes 40 days) | 45 days auto-renew grace (.com Registry Agreement) |
| Redemption | 30 days, then a 5-day hold; redemption fee plus one year’s renewal | 30 days, then a 5-day hold; redemption fee plus one year’s renewal | 30 days, then 5 days pending delete |
| Transfer lock | 60 days after registration or a previous transfer (registrar policy) | 60 days after registration or a previous transfer (registrar policy) | 60 days after registration, a transfer or a registrant change (ICANN Transfer Policy) |
Registry rules in this table were read from the sources listed at the end of this post on the date shown. Vedatricks prices are indicative; registry wholesale prices change, and when they do the new price applies from your next renewal and is shown before you pay.
How do I transfer a domain to Vedatricks?
Unlock the domain at the current registrar, request the authorisation code, keep the nameservers unchanged, and start the transfer; on .in the registry completes it in five 24-hour periods. ICANN’s Transfer Policy lets a registrar refuse a transfer within 60 days of registration or a previous transfer, and locks the name for 60 days after a registrant change unless you opted out.
The .in authorisation code is 6 to 16 characters.
Recreate your DNS records at the destination before you switch nameservers, so mail and the website never point at an empty zone. Confirm the email address on the domain’s contact record still works, because the registrars send their transfer confirmations there. The .IN registry advises changing the authorisation code after a transfer; do it through the new registrar on the day the transfer completes.
Who is the registrar, and why does it matter?
Vedatricks is a reseller, not an ICANN-accredited registrar. For .com and the other generic domains registered through us the sponsoring registrar of record is PDR Ltd. d/b/a PublicDomainRegistry.com (IANA ID 303), named in your registration confirmation and in the public record for the domain; your rights come from that registrar’s agreement and from ICANN’s Registrants’ Benefits and Responsibilities.
For a .in name the registrar of record is a NIXI-accredited registrar, named in the same confirmation. ICANN publishes what a registrant who bought through a reseller can expect, including how to find the sponsoring registrar with a lookup and where to complain if a transfer is blocked. Keep the confirmation email: it is the document that proves who holds the name.
What should I set up straight after registering?
Nameservers pointing at your host, an MX record if you want mail on the domain, an SPF record so your mail is not rejected, and registrar lock switched back on. Then complete the .in KYC the day the link arrives, so the name never goes on hold, and put the renewal date in the same calendar as your GST filings.
Give the registrar account a role mailbox that more than one person reads. A domain lapses when the renewal notice lands in a mailbox that belonged to someone who left.
Sources
Registry and ICANN facts in this post were read on 22 September 2026 from the pages below. Vedatricks prices are derived from the wholesale rate card as it stood on 9 April 2026.
- .IN Registry, KYC is mandatory (CERT-In directions under Section 70B, IT Act 2000) — https://www.registry.in/kyc-mandatory
- NIXI, Guidelines for eKYC: letters of 24 and 28 February 2022 and the portal walkthrough (PDF) — https://www.registry.in/uploads/files/e_KYC.pdf
- .IN Registry, Advisories index, including “Requisites for Registration of .IN Domain Names for Indian and Foreign Nationals” (29 July 2025) and the advisory on auctions and speculative trading (11 May 2026) — https://www.registry.in/advisories
- .IN Registry, Terms and Conditions for Registrants (PDF), clauses 1, 3 and 9 — https://www.registry.in/system/files/Terms_and_Conditions_for_Registrants.pdf
- .IN Registry, Advisory LA-02: Accurate WHOIS Information in Domain — https://www.registry.in/registry-advisory-la-02
- .IN Registry, FAQs: Redemption Grace Period and Redemption Hold Period — https://www.registry.in/faqs
- .IN Registry, Domain name transfers — https://www.registry.in/domainnametransfers
- NIXI RDAP service, records for nixi.in and bigrock.in (base URL from the IANA RDAP bootstrap, published 16 September 2026) — https://rdap.nixiregistry.in/rdap/domain/nixi.in
- OpenSRS, NIXI (.IN domains) compliance registrant verification process — https://support.opensrs.com/support/solutions/articles/201000120140-nixi-in-domains-compliance-registrant-verification-process
- OpenSRS, .IN domain policies — https://support.opensrs.com/support/solutions/articles/201000063551—in-domain-policies
- INForum, registrar e-KYC notice for .IN effective 1 August 2025 (thread of 24 July 2025) — https://www.inforum.in/threads/mandatory-e-kyc-for-in-domain-registrations-as-per-nixi-guidelines.30676/
- ICANN, .com Registry Agreement, Appendix 7 — https://www.icann.org/en/registry-agreements/com/com-registry-agreement-appendix-7-1-12-2012-en
- ICANN, Expired Registration Recovery Policy — https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/errp-2013-02-28-en
- ICANN, Transfer Policy — https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/transfer-policy-2016-06-01-en
- ICANN, Information for registrants using resellers — https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/reseller-2013-05-03-en
- ICANN, Registrants’ Benefits and Responsibilities — https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/benefits-2013-09-16-en